Hearing loss is a common condition within the human population and the manifestation of hearing loss can have a significant impact to the quality of human life. There are many factors that can induce hearing loss which may include disease, genetic disposition, injury, and normal aging. However, different human individuals often exhibit varying levels and manifestations of hearing loss that may change over time. Furthermore, the audio environment that the individual is placed in may have a significant impact to the ability to hear desired sounds. For example, an individual that is in a small room setting while attempting to listen to another individual speak within a relatively quiet amount of ambient background noise may have difficulty depending on the speech characteristics of the person trying to speak, while the same individual who is trying to listen is placed in a crowded room or environment, such as a restaurant, may hear a high amount of sound energy, but the ambient background noise is relatively high resulting in a poor ability for the hearing individual to hear and understand individuals who may be speaking to the hearing individual.
The hearing loss may manifest as an attenuation of hearing sensitivity across the full hearing audio spectrum range, the spectrum range comprising approximately 100 Hz to approximately 8000 Hz. Furthermore, an individual's hearing loss may manifest as an ability to hear higher frequencies (above 1000 Hz), but not lower frequencies (below 1000 Hz). The converse may also be true, wherein the hearing loss manifests as an ability to hear lower frequencies (below 1000 Hz), but not hear well above 1000 Hz.
Therefore, it is desirable for a manufacturer of hearing aids and like devices to be able to accommodate many individuals with varying degrees and type of hearing loss that can be adjusted for the individual in a compact device that can be worn on the body and is relatively low cost.